The sunset is electric tonight on Massachusetts’s South Shore. It’s the sub-freezing New England kind of sky that beckons you outdoors with no sound regard for glove or mitten. I’m watching it while on a ferry, arguably the MTA’s greatest innovation since the T because it allows a person to leapfrog I-93 and arrive at Logan airport with impressive tranquility. I’m also less than 20 miles from Brockton, the place where my Dad grew up. On this Saint Stephen’s Day, I leave in a blaze of colors as memorable as my time spent here at home.

During this trip I realized that adulthood is a climbing staircase to increasing levels of chilling the fuck out. Paradoxically, I felt this with greater intensity when presented with things that traditionally would have wound me up. On this occasion I tended to instead shrug and rebrand stuff as non-issues unworthy of my limited headspace. Maybe it’s sensory overload and the fact that the human brain simply can’t house everything at once—but these days it now feels okay if I leave things on the floor. There are tasks that will be neglected, aspirations that will ultimately be unrealized. I am thinking of my aunt in this particular case.

For all intents and purposes, she left us as she was driving from her Mashpee neighborhood where I grew up. She was on her way over to my father’s house in her Jeep in order to collect a freshly lacquered Saint Nicholas decoration for her front door. When she was about halfway there, she pulled over on and called my father. I think I am having a stroke. As a licensed practical nurse, she knew what she was talking about. As the oldest sibling in his family, my father knew that she did too. He got into the car, and called 911.  

The ambulance showed up a few minutes after Dad found her on the side of Sandwich Road. Quickly losing functionality of her extremities, she barely got the power window down to allow my dad to open the door. Inside the car, a bag of loose change sat in the center console—likely waiting to be cashed in for bills. A freshly opened box from Amazon was on the floor of the passenger side. The back seat was removed and was replaced by a dog bed. Back in Mashpee, a black lab and blind cat waited for her to return from these unremarkable errands.

Not even a week later, I was on Cape Cod as planned for Christmas. I thought about my aunt Julie as Dad and I drove from Falmouth to Mashpee to Barnstable and checked in on Julie’s remaining affairs. In making the rounds, I was heartened to discover that at every stop we made, people knew Julie well. I’m personally seeing to this because I was so fond of her.And in reviewing the last of her paperwork, we discovered that there remained items that will never be resolved in the way she wanted. In passing away so suddenly, Julie left a number of things unfinished. But at the end of the day, as apply this fantastic new lens of adulthood, I truly believe that they ultimately don’t matter.

Coming back home—or to a place of cherished memories—always generates a Reunion/Re-experience List the length of a CVS receipt. It includes revisiting familiar food, places and faces—but honestly, the activities are usually centered around the people you consider family. The people who understand.  On Christmas Day, we all played our familiar parts in the frenzy that felt like a fast-forwarded VHS tape; but even in this chaos, I never got too caught up in the details of the day. Hell, I wasn’t even paying attention when most of my thoughtfully-selected gifts were unwrapped by family—even though I once had that very vision in mind. But I still had loads of fun. In getting older, our sleigh of experience gets so overladen that we can’t help but drop some of the things we can’t carry—even when all of them hold value. Carrying a full load, that’s the price that comes with leading a life well lived. With leaving a life well lived. 

When the ambulance arrived at Falmouth Hospital, Julie was no longer conscious. Diagnosed with a brain bleed, the decision was made to fly her to Boston. As the hospital staff rushed to pass her off to the MedFlight, one of the air crew stopped as they registered my father and brother standing in this new world unfolding. Is this the family?Wait a minute. This takes priority. And then, inside the skin of a hospital, where everyone is ultimately simplified to vital signs and chartwork, my father leaned down and whispered into his baby sister’s ear. 

If you can hear me, do not worry about anything. We have the watch.

They recorded Dad’s voice, so that it could be played for Julie during the 25-minute journey north. And once she was at Tufts Medical Center, she never did wake up. All of her plans, her life still in progress—that was the completion. Her story, a heavy tome held in the hands of some higher power, was softly closed shut.

For now, Julie’s Jeep sits parked at home next to the Generator Barn. My brother had a friend at the police station who helped him go and get it off the side of the road. That Amazon box containing God-knows-what is still sitting upright on the floor. The bag of loose change, my father took it out and donated the sum to Toys for Tots. Julie always loved her Jeeps, and she would take Dad for trips to Nobska lighthouse and through the old family environs in Woods Hole. She loved where life took her just as I love riding this ferry that helps me to connect home with the world abroad. I had decided to make this trip many months ago, but now as we’ve lost Julie so unexpectedly, being here now feels even more important. Even as my brain lets a tangle of emotions float on by with little much struggle, I recognize in mid-life state that the fact of just being there is the thing that matters.

If all goes well, in about eight hours I will have walked out of Heathrow Airport, taken a red double decker bus for £1.50 and find myself deposited in front of my flat. I will consider unpacking the latest array of keepsakes accumulated from my time in The Bay State. I will flip on my espresso machine and make ready to grind up some coffee beans. As I make my coffee, I will look just to my left and smile at the framed watercolor painting of Nobska Lighthouse. The one that Julie painted years ago and somehow got passed on to me. There are many things in Julie’s life that she managed to complete, and through my life I continue to take her with me. 

After a December like this—one that is undeniably bittersweet—my honest hope is that I can be as fortunate as Julie was: to make a modest mark on the places I frequent, to be remembered with a smile, and ultimately, to get myself pulled over and safe in order to be taken swiftly and gently with the people I love whispering into my ear.